JHS Pedals has unveiled the Cheese Ball, a clone of the Lovetone Big Cheese distortion/fuzz (opens in new tab) stompbox that was big in the '90s and now is one of the most sought-after cult guitar effects pedals (opens in new tab).
The Big Cheese could count the likes of the Edge, Jimmy Page, Kevin Shields and the late Gary Moore among its fans, with an original pedal currently commanding around £649 (opens in new tab) in the used gear market.
As great as it sounds, over 600 sheets is a lot for a pedal. Well, the JHS Pedals' Cheese Ball is built to get you that tone and for an altogether more reasonable price of £179 street.
As JHS' big cheese Josh Scott said of the Big Cheese clone, in between mouthfuls of Cheez Balls, his clone was "meticulously replicated" from an original 1995 LoveTone Big Cheese, and he "did it with precise detail and didn’t trust any of the currently available online schematics.”
So the Cheese Ball comes with an all-new repro circuit, a smaller enclosure, too, but with similar controls to help season your tone with the distortion/fuzz you want.
There are four knobs on the enclosure – volume, gain and tone are self-explanatory, while the mode selector control selects between four gain voices.
In the "off" position, the pedal's tone control is taken out of play for a "bright and trashy fuzz/distortion sound." In the first position, you've got some Big Muff-vibe going on, in the second the mids are a bit more front-and-centre, while position 3 offers a really nasty gated fuzz tone, and let's face it, sometimes really nasty is just what you need from your gain.
The Cheese Ball is available to pre-order now from the usual online retailers and ships late October.
And keep track of all that's going on at the JHS HQ here (opens in new tab).
